Does the UK economy grow faster under a Conservative or Labour government?

Abstract

We use quarterly data from 1955 to 2019 to examine the performance of Conservative and Labour administrations in terms of real GDP growth in the United Kingdom. To account for fiscal lags in the legislation and implementation of new policies by each administration, we explore up to lag 8 in addition to an overlapping technique. Our main finding is that the UK economy has grown with a similar pace under both parties, however Labour governments seem to do better in tackling recessions and achieve a more consistent performance. Labour’s advantage becomes more pronounced if we discount the effect of a large external shock, the 2008 Financial Crisis.